Time and Distance (and a Short, Off-topic Distraction)

Saturday night, I finished the first draft of Ugly and the Beast.

Sunday morning, I realized I hate the end.  Well, not hate exactly, but it's certainly not everything I want it to be.  So I opened the file and went to the end with grandiose ideas of how I was going to fix everything.  And then I closed the file.  Fourteen hours is not enough time to let anything simmer.  And this writing stuff definitely needs time to simmer.

That's not to say I'm going to let the whole manuscript simmer.  I've had sufficient time away from the beginning parts to dive into those ASAP.  Good god, I started writing this thing last year.  Then I rewrote the beginning months ago.  Plenty of time to provide the distance I need.

If you jump right into editing something you just wrote, two things will happen - you'll still be in love with every word or it'll flip and you'll hate everything.  The latter is what usually happens to me.  I go though the 'OMG, I can't believe I wrote this crap' phase almost every time I don't give myself distance from it.

Now, for me, distance isn't that hard to achieve.  The memory thing I've got going on gives me distance quicker than probably a lot of other people.  It usually takes about a week.  Sometimes shorter, sometimes longer.  By the time I get done making edit notes on the stuff I wrote months ago, I should be in a place to edit the stuff I wrote in the past couple weeks.

We'll see how that goes.

I had originally planned to have this in my editor's hands by the end of the month.  That gives me about three weeks.  I've been in touch with AWE and she's cool with that, but because of some other stuff she has going on, it'll be a 5 week turnaround this time.  And I'm cool with that.  If I get it to her in 3 weeks, she does 5 weeks, I turn around my 2nd round in 2 weeks, she does her thing in 3 weeks, I polish and get formatted in say another 2 weeks.  That puts us 15 weeks out for publication.  Hold on while I do the math...  mid-June.  Good lord willin' and the crick don't rise.

Sorry, got away from the topic there for a second.  What was I saying?  Oh, yeah, time and distance.  You absolutely need 'em.  They give you a shot at objectivity.  They allow you to look at your writing with fresh eyes.  They let you actually see that your work is neither the greatest thing ever nor a total pile of dreck.

How much time do you need to get distance from your work?

The Research Distraction

Writers are easily distracted.  I mean, it kind of goes with the territory, don't ya think? I think our brains are wired to notice all the shiny, pretty things. Only the most hardcore and committed among us (I'm not one of them) can keep our mind on the task in front of us for protracted amounts of time.  I can think of a few, but I think they're the exception to the rule.  And the worst distractor - when it comes to writing (and not the rest of life which is full of shiny, pretty things) - is research.

Research is necessary part of writing.  Obviously, we write about all sorts of things we cannot necessarily have personal experience with.  And then there are the things we do have personal experience with, but we want to make sure we're writing it right, or saying it right, to give readers a richer experience.  Needless to say, research - while necessary - can certainly take us away from the task at hand.  Whatever that task may be.

Yesterday, I got distracted researching something from Dying Embers - which is already out and people are buying it and reading it, so this isn't even something I NEED to research.  It was phrasing I had used that a reader had a question about.  And then I had to know where the phrase originated and perhaps how it got inserted into my lexicon.  :shrug:

This morning, I got distracted looking for something to talk about on this blog.  All I wanted was a psychological disorder that might lead one to a life of crime.  Instead I followed the rabbit down this path and that path... Did you know there's a study linking psychological disorders and traumatic brain injury?  Oh, and that anti-social personality disorder is now called 'sociopathy'?  And that according to Slate, 'abnormal is the new normal' and they're totally okay with that?  And there's something called Avoidant Personality Disorder - which I'm pretty sure I'm in recovery from...

Ahem.  Where was I?

Ah, yes, the research distraction.  I've had many a time when I was writing along nicely, churning the words out, when some tiny aspect of the story needed a little research.  I spent an unmentionable amount of time researching big, white dog breeds for Wish in One Hand, for instance.  (Research combined with a personal interest is the worst.  Decided on the Kuvasz, btw.)  Coming back to the writing after that is sometimes hard and occasionally, the whole writing session can be derailed due to one little thing, which leads to another little thing, which leads to another little thing until you start out researching varieties of wild mushrooms because the gal who found the body was trying to teach a client which ones are edible and which are poisonous, and you find yourself hours later looking at YouTube videos of cats.

One thing I've learned to do, and what the hardcore, committed writers seem to do, is instead of going off to chase the rabbit, you put a placemarker in the writing - and then keep writing.  When you edit, you do the research then, so as not to interrupt the flow.  And lord knows, for me, there's usually no editing flow to interrupt.  Of course, that only helps when you're actually in the writing groove.  If you're doing something else, and the research bunny hops in your path, you're pretty much screwed.

SQUIRREL!

How do you deal with distractions?  Have you ever started out looking up one thing online and then followed the rabbit down a twisted path?  Where's you end up?